For those who didn't see Utah's 37-21 victory over Weber State on Saturday night — and that includes a lot of people, since it is the only non-televised Ute game of the season — they might wonder how in the heck the Wildcats kept it that close against the 17th-ranked team in the country.
One reason is that the Wildcats have an outstanding offense behind quarterback Cameron Higgins that can move the ball on a lot of teams. Another is that the Utes, as many expected, came out flat, perhaps looking ahead to Thursday night's game against USC-killer Oregon State.
Perhaps the biggest factor in the deceiving final score was the play of the Ute backups, who showed they clearly weren't as good as the Weber first-teamers.
Except for some of the offensive linemen for one series, the Ute backups played the fourth quarter, which the Utes went into leading 34-7. Against the Ute reserves, the Wildcats were able to put together drives of 80 and 89 yards for two late touchdowns, the last coming with just 12 seconds left in the game.
The two late scores left the Utes almost looking like they'd lost the game with little celebrating and not a lot of smiles after the game.
"The most disappointing thing to me in the game was the way our (No.) 2 defense played in those last two drives and gave up two late scores," said coach Kyle Whittingham. "We didn't put up much resistance."
Ute starting defensive tackle Greg Newman, who had another excellent game with five tackles, a sack, two tackles for losses and a fumble recovery, didn't hide his displeasure with the second-team defense.
When asked if he was disappointed about the way his backup mates played, Newman said, "It does, it really bugs me actually. But there's nothing you can do about it."
Even kicker Louis Sakoda chimed in, saying, "It put a bad taste in our mouth. We have to have our second defense go in there and do the job."
Whittingham said his dissatisfaction of beating a Football Championship Subdivision school by just 16 points had nothing to do with the Utes' national perception.
"I don't care about that," he said. "If I cared about that, we would have kept trying to score. But if we would have had our No. 1s in there when the game was out of reach and someone got injured, you would kick yourself."
Whittingham didn't blame his second-team offense, even though if it would have moved the ball better in the fourth quarter, it would have kept the Weber offense off the field.
Third-team quarterback Chad Manis got his first action as a Ute and completed 3 of 4 passes for 24 yards. Backup running backs Eddie Wide ran for 34 yards on five carries and Ray Stowers rushed for 8 yards on three carries.
"We kind of harnessed them a little bit," said Whittingham. "We only threw the ball a couple of times and played it close to the vest. I don't think that's a fair assessment of the No. 2 offense's capability based on the play calling."
Whittingham also didn't criticize Weber for going all out with their first team, after the Utes had throttled back for the evening. Even after scoring with 12 seconds left and down by 16, the Wildcats attempted an onsides kick.
"They've got Montana next week and I'm sure they wanted their offense tuned up as much as possible and so they kept firing away," Whittingham said. "I don't have a problem with that."
In the end, Whittingham and the players said this game was behind them and all the focus had shifted to Thursday night's game against Oregon State.
"Sure we would have liked to go out there and win by 40 or 50 points, but that didn't happen," he said. "It was a win — you can't lose sight of the fact that we won the football game."
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